But brave as these men were in the presence of the headsman, they shuddered at the very thought of a barber. They gloried in their long hair. To lose their heads was an incident of war; to lose their locks a disgrace which followed them even into the next world. According to a superstition of theirs, a Sea-Cavalier who lost his curls just before parting with his head was doomed to be a Roundhead ghost and a laughing-stock throughout eternity.
Up strode the fierce headsman, Tharkell Leire, and bade the captive Viking lean forward and lay his golden hair upon the log. He obeyed, but held his calm, sky-blue eye upon the glittering axe, and, quick as a flash, as it descended, covered his fair curls with his fairer neck. And when his seventeen comrades, who sat there waiting their turn, saw how their wily captain had outwitted their enemy, and how he raged thereat, they roared with Sea-King laughter.
27.
III.—THE BOUCHES.
Every school-boy knows what the Edict of Nantes was; but philosophers differ as to what was the effect of its revocation upon the fortunes of France. For us it is enough to know that Louis XIV., by recalling it, drove to Virginia our ancestor John Bouche, whose daughter, Elizabeth, completely captivated my great etc. grandfather, Tom Whacker, by her pretty French accent and trim French figure. She was good and wise, too; but the rascal never found that out till after he married her. It must be owing to the Danichester strain, I suppose, that the Whackers, so sensible in many ways, have always sought grace and beauty in their wives, rather than piety and learning; and I suppose I shall be no wiser than my fathers when my time comes.
This Huguenot cross gave the old Whacker stock a twist towards theology. Two of the sons of Thomas and Elizabeth took orders, much to the surprise of their father, who used to say that Reverend Whacker had a queer sound to his ear. So prepotent, in fact, has the Huguenot strain become, that a Whacker is no longer a Whacker. In the old days our eyes were as blue as the sky; now they are as black as sloes. Once we were reserved and silent; now—but enough. As for myself, it has often seemed to me that I was all Bouche,—Bouche et præterea nihil,—as the ancient Romans put it in their compact way.
Needless to say, therefore, that this book was to instruct and edify you. You may see that from the very first sentence of it all that I wrote:
“And, now in conclusion, my dear boy, if you rise from the perusal of this work a wiser and better man, the direct author of the book and the indirect author of your being will feel amply repaid for all his toil.”
Such were my intentions. And now read the book, as it stands. Heavens and earth, was there ever such another! Alas, those Danichester molecules, what have they not made me say! Page after page, and chapter after chapter, in which I defy even a mouse to pick up a crumb of edification. Chapter after chapter of feasting, fiddling, dancing, courting,—roast turkeys, broiled oysters, hams seven years old. Bowls full of egg-nogg, pipes full of tobacco, students full of apple-toddy,—everything to make a man feel good, nothing to make him be good. For the heathen Viking in me speaks!
Yet he does not hold entire sway. But as we sit—you and I and the friends you shall presently make—sit joyously picnicking in a fair wood—more than once the trees above us, as you shall find, will seem to moan, as they bend before the gentle breeze. ’Tis the spirit of the melancholy Jaques, perched like a raven, there. To him a sob lies lurking in every laugh; and his weary eyes can never look upon a dimple—a dimple, smile-wrought in damask cheek—but they see therein the sheen of coming tears.